Designer: John Harte
Publisher: Harte Games
From the game box:
"...the exciting board game about our basic instincts...
Appeals to the adventurer and the land hunger in all of us. Players make their fortunes in gold rushes and diamond claims, discover new territories and take part in war games - while they plunder land and money."
Players move their pawns around the game-board at the throw of dice. When you land on any one of the illustrated squares, it directs you to perform one or more of the following acts:
• Land on any territory and take it; from one of 134 Land Title Cards. Each card represents a territory in England, France, Ireland, Scotland or Wales and has a dollar value which doubles when you collect a set.
• Land on a battleground and you may win or lose the battle. Either way, you pick up a card from the top of the winner's pack or loser's pack, and learn your fate.
•If you encounter a barricade which prevents you from advancing further, you have three choices to overcome it: one is to bribe each player with $3000 to let you through.
• There are also safe-houses for refuge in bad times.
• Land on any Action square and you must pick up an Action Card from one of ten packs in a plastic tray. each has an instruction for you: you may obtain more territory, make your fortune or advance speedily across the board. Or you may be unlucky and lose land or be forced to retreat.
Each player starts with $100,000. the objective is to increase your net worth by game end.
Each tour around the board represents a hundred years in time, and you accumulate a fortune at the end of each tour, fro your sets of territories. Each of the 10 packs of ACTION CARDS represents a different century. During your first tour of the board, you may take Action Cards from the first pack which is the 11th century. For your next tour, you take from the 12th century, and so on until you reach the 20th century and end the game.
EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS
For adult history buffs who want to read them, each Action Card also describes vivid historic episodes. Students who wish to be informed on the real background to their studies may learn how the English speaking peoples, and the French, survived the ups and down of fortunes over the past 1000 years.
For players who like war games, major battles mentioned on Action Cards often have military strategy or new weapons technology described.